048: Walked in
**Chapter 47**
I drove aimlessly through the quieter streets of the city, using the movement and the changing scenery to burn time. The girl sleeping in the passenger seat still needed to be taken home, but not while she remained completely unconscious and vulnerable.
[Lust level: Orange]
[Berserk state imminent]
[The user is advised to relieve himself]
The notifications hovered stubbornly in my vision. I ignored them. My cock was still painfully hard, so I had left it free rather than force it back into the tight confines of my swimwear, where it would only press and ache against the fabric.
I wanted relief. The need sat heavy and constant in my lower body. Yet Sasha had passed out hard after that last orgasm, and I refused to touch her while she was unaware. That boundary still mattered to me.
There was a second reason I held back. This situation offered a chance to build real resistance. I had never been interested in drugs, but the comparison felt accurate enough. If I ever reached a point where no convenient outlet existed, I needed to know I could endure the pressure without immediately breaking. Giving in was sometimes the correct choice. Learning to tolerate the discomfort was the other half of control. With the cure sitting right beside me, if things truly became unbearable, this was as practical a training opportunity as I was likely to get.
I had already redressed her using the inventory. Storing her discarded clothes and then equipping them back onto her unconscious body had required more trial and error than expected. The concept had simply occurred to me mid-drive, and I wanted to test whether it was possible. Positioning the fabric correctly while she remained limp proved tricky, but after several adjustments, I managed to get everything back in place without leaving obvious signs of what had happened.
Any further activity with her was postponed. We had already been gone close to half an hour, and the drive into town was only twenty minutes under normal conditions. Inventing excuses for a longer absence felt unnecessary and risky. I decided the rest of the session could wait until later that night when privacy would be easier to secure.
It was Friday evening. Tomorrow would be Saturday. Summer vacation had already begun for the girls, which meant their schedules were largely open. Mira still had occasional club obligations in the afternoons, but otherwise the three of them and I had the remainder of the summer free of mandatory commitments.
When the house finally came into view, I parked and gently woke Sasha. She was still half-asleep and instinctively leaned toward me for a kiss. The moment I told her we were home, the drowsiness vanished from her eyes. She looked down, registered the state I was still in, and her expression shifted into something troubled and faintly guilty.
“I’m sorry, Tyler. I don’t know what came over me.”
I waved the apology off. “For now, just go inside. I’ll see you later.”
“Later?” she asked, still looking at the obvious problem.
“Yeah. Someone has to deal with this.” I gestured downward.
She nodded with sudden determination. “Don’t worry. I’ll take proper care of you tonight.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
We spent a short minute aligning our story. The shop had already closed by the time we arrived, so the package would have to wait until Monday. Since the entire errand had been an excuse, Sasha planned to buy something later and present it as the original item. I would cover the cost, of course—though in a very different sense I would still be the one giving.
Four in the afternoon still left plenty of daylight.
I entered the house and found the earlier guests already gone. The family was in the middle of cleaning the pool area and kitchen. The matching expressions of suffering on Sara and Mira’s faces were almost comical, as if someone were forcing them to perform chores under threat. Apparently the twin connection extended to a shared and dramatic hatred of housework.
“Already back?” Aunt Elise asked when she noticed me.
“Yeah. The store was closed,” I answered. Sasha must have gone straight upstairs without offering any explanation.
“I see.”
[Warning]
[Lust level approaching ‘Red’]
The notification was hardly surprising. Residual lust haze still lingered throughout the house, and the effect on me was immediate and oppressive. It felt uncomfortably close to withdrawal symptoms while the exact substance I needed sat in plain view around me. I shook my head, pushed the alerts aside, and went directly to my room.
I stayed there until dinner. In the intervening hours, I sat cross-legged on the floor and focused on controlled breathing—the same method Rox had used to draw ambient mana into his body and refine it into aura. No usable mana existed in the air here. The only supply was whatever already resided inside me, and I still lacked the fine control required to move or purify it deliberately. The ongoing quests appeared to be elevating my physical stats toward the one-star master threshold. Rox’s memories gave me the theoretical framework, but I had no personal practical experience. The process might function differently in my case. For the time being, I chose to wait until the next major quest was completed before pushing any further. The bonus points coming from Sasha were accumulating faster than anticipated. Even the earlier session had granted two additional points. I now held enough free attributes to raise a single physical stat to forty, yet I preferred additional experimentation before crossing that clear threshold into the supernatural.
Dinner itself was quieter than usual. Sara’s persistent refusal to meet my eyes had become noticeable enough that Aunt Elise eventually commented on it.
“Everything okay between you two? You’re not fighting, are you?”
Sara immediately choked on a mouthful of food and began coughing. Mira handed her a glass of water without missing a beat. Before Sara could recover enough to speak, I answered for both of us.
“Sara walked in on me changing earlier. She probably saw something she wasn’t meant to see.”
Mira’s gaze flicked toward me as though a piece of a private puzzle had just clicked into place. Aunt Elise let out a soft chuckle.
Sara stared at me with wide, betrayed eyes. The excuse was still preferable to the truth.
“Oh, those things happen,” Aunt Elise said, clearly amused. “Trust me, I would know. I grew up with three brothers. If I had a nickel for every time I accidentally walked in on them doing… things.”
Sasha made a face of pure disgust. “Eww… Mom! No one wants to hear about that.”
Aunt Elise only laughed harder. “I’m simply saying these situations are normal when you live in a large family. You girls are lucky you never had brothers. Our parents eventually installed cameras around the house just to stop those puberty-driven idiots from starting anywhere they felt like.”
“Eww!!!” Sasha repeated. This time both Mira and Sara joined the chorus of disgust.
Tom chuckled from his seat. “Puberty. Hardest stretch of my life, no question.” He then looked over at me. “What about you, Tyler? How did you handle yours?”
Busy jerking off on a fixed schedule, I thought. If only the honest answer were socially acceptable.
I smiled instead. “I’m an only child, and I’ve always had reasonably good control over my hormones, so nothing particularly dramatic on my end.”
The more accurate version was that my mother had always been aware of the reality and had deliberately given me privacy. No embarrassing accidents ever occurred because both of us were careful. I restricted everything to my locked room at consistent times, and she made a point of never interrupting during those windows.
“So you walked in on him, huh?” Sasha said, already wearing a mischievous grin. Everyone at the table could sense the inappropriate question forming. “How big was it?”
Sara choked a second time. Mira patted her back firmly while turning a sharp look on their younger sister. “Sasha! Stop.”
Sasha only giggled. The rest of the table shook their heads in collective resignation. Wanting to reduce some of the pressure on Sara, I added calmly, “I was wearing underwear.”
“Oh? So she missed the main dish?” Sasha pressed without mercy.
More head shakes. Aunt Elise finally intervened with a firmer tone.
“That’s enough, Sasha. Your sister is already embarrassed as is.” She paused, then continued in a more serious voice. “I know the three of you aren’t used to knocking because it’s always been only girls in this house, but we have a boy staying with us for the summer. A little extra consideration would be appreciated.”
All three girls nodded. Sara still looked thoroughly awkward. Tom remained largely uninvolved in the conversation, as was his habit. When the meal concluded, Aunt Elise announced, “Movie time, everyone. We missed it last time because your father was busy, so tonight we’ll watch two.”
The girls agreed. Sasha looked particularly enthusiastic. I had intended to visit her room later in the evening, but the group activity meant that plan would have to be delayed.
The series they chose was a German thriller set in a small, isolated town. The first episode opened with a child going missing and quickly escalated when a second disappearance occurred. I found myself more absorbed in the story than expected and had no desire to pause when a sudden sharp pinch landed on my arm.
I turned, fully expecting Sasha.
Instead, I found Sara. She held my gaze for a second and then silently mouthed the words,
“Follow me.”